Recently, DNV GL Healthcare and CoxHealth participated in a Healthcare Web Summit webinar discussion on Unconventional Paths to Reducing Patient Readmissions. If you missed this informative webinar presentation, watch the On-Demand version here. After the webinar, we interviewed the CoxHealth team on four key takeaways from the webinar: ........Click to continue

CMS has just touted the National Health Expenditure growth of 3.9% for 2017 is at historic low levels, with the Office of the Actuary stating “prior to the coverage expansions and temporary high growth in prescription drug spending during that same period, health spending was growing at historically low rates. In 2017, health care spending growth returned to these lower rates and the health spending share of GDP stabilized for the first time since 2013.”........Click to continue

In the provider administrative world, two continuing challenges causing large audible sighs are dealing with EHRs and ever-increasing levels of patient cost-sharing. An 11-page report just released on the annual HFMA/Navigant survey tackles these topics, providing findings from responses of 107 hospital and health system CFOs and revenue cycle management executives.......Click to continue

Melinda Ashton, M.D., has a great article in NEJM: Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff. It describes a program her health system (Hawaii Pacific Health) undertook to do exactly that, with some promising results.........Click to continue

The AAFP (American Academy of Family Physicians) has highlighted a new Harris Poll survey - commissioned by the Samueli Integrative Health Programs - that shows "there are considerable gaps between what primary care physicians (PCPs) discuss with their patients and what patients would like to discuss with their physician." In particular, the concern raised from the survey seems to be that this communication gap is an impediment to SDOH (social determinants of health) goals..........Click to continue

Oliver Wyman’s just released 2018 consumer healthcare survey report: Waiting for Consumers, appropriately includes a picture of a door on its cover, as the headline on the second page of narrative reads “The New Front Door, Try It, You’ll Like It.” The report concludes that “those who have tried alternative forms of healthcare delivery are happy with them” and “despite that finding, there hasn’t been much change in the number of consumers – about 10 percent – who have actually used the new front door, though the number who say they are willing to try is rising sharply.”.........Click to continue

Two reports were published this week on deferred medical care driven by cost considerations, based on survey findings. Earnin’s report: Waiting to Feel Better: Survey Reveals Cost Delays Timely Care is based on two surveys – a commissioned online Harris Poll among over 2,000 U.S. adults and an Earnin poll of their users, “many of which live paycheck to paycheck.” AccessOne’s report: AccessOne Patient Finance Survey- Analysis on how healthcare costs impact is based on a survey conducted by ORC International of 693 people with at least $35,000 in annual household income, weighted by age, sex, geographic region, race and education..........Click to continue

Recently, Gary Word, Ph.D., Vice President, Network and Payment Solutions, Change Healthcare, participated in a Healthcare Web Summit webinar discussion on Ways to Leverage Financial Tools to Optimize Digital Member Engagement. If you missed this informative webinar presentation, watch the On-Demand version here. After the webinar, we interviewed Gary on key takeaways from the webinar: .........Click to continue

One of the most thought-provoking articles I've read lately is Tom Vanderbilt's Why Futurism Has a Cultural Blindspot in Nautilus. In it, he discusses how our technological visions of the future seem to do much better on predicting the technology of that future than they do the culture in which they will be used.........Click to continue

CMS announced that “1,299 entities have signed agreements with the agency to participate in the Administration’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement – Advanced (BPCI Advanced) Model. The participating entities will receive bundled payments for certain episodes of care as an alternative to fee-for-service payments that reward only the volume of care delivered. The Model participants include 832 Acute Care Hospitals and 715 Physician Group Practices – a total of 1,547 Medicare providers and suppliers, located in 49 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.” ........Click to continue

The Kaiser Family Foundation 2018 Employer Benefit Survey, an annual 200+ page definitive report of the state of employer health benefits since 1999, includes these eighteen things to know that KFF highlights:..........Click to continue

NCQA has released its 2018-2019 Health Insurance Plan Ratings. The ratings are a key tool used by stakeholders in evaluating health plans. NCQA tells us they “studied nearly 1,500 health plans and rated 1,040: 445 private (commercial), 418 Medicare and 177 Medicaid” and that “of the 1,040 rated plans, 85 (8%) received a top rating of 4.5 or 5.0 out of 5. Twenty-five (2%) earned the ratings of 1.0 to 2.0.”............Click to continue

It is 2018 everywhere, but not every country is treating being in the 21st century equally. China is rushing into it, even in healthcare, while the United States is tip-toeing its way towards the future. Especially in healthcare: Let’s look at a few examples:.............Click to continue

The recently released 111-page Next Generation Accountable Care Organization (NGACO) Model Evaluation First Annual Report prepared by NORC on behalf of CMS provides a treasure trove of ACO tidbits, as CMS uses the report to tout emphasizing higher risk sharing arrangements. Here’s the NGACOs examined in the report, followed by twenty selected interesting takeaways:......Click to continue

The U.S. spends a staggering $2.1B annually across the healthcare industry chasing and maintaining provider data – and as much as 75% of this cost is duplicative. Maintaining and facilitating exchange of accurate provider data is a critical component to payers being able to operate effectively and ensure their members have access to the care they need. But a key challenge remains: inaccurate provider data......Click to continue

A few recent stories are, I believe, reaffirming one of the big problems about healthcare: hospitals are 19th century institutions operating under 20th century business models in the 21st century. It’s time to rethink what we want a “hospital” to be................Click to continue

CMS this week announced that Part D premiums are expected to fall from $33.59 this year to $32.50 in 2019. Of course it’s not that simple. First of all, $32.50 is the “basic” premium rate. What Medicare beneficiaries actually pay is income adjusted on a sliding scale. Here are the 2019 “income-related monthly adjustment amounts” just released by CMS:...............Click to continue

Listen closely, healthcare organizations and professionals: those sounds you are not hearing are the voices of people not speaking up, including patients. And that’s a problem. Let’s start with the elephant in the room: a new study found that even when physicians actually asked patients why they were there, on average they only listened to the patient’s explanation for eleven — that’s 11 — seconds before interrupting them...............Click to continue

The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions has just released some preliminary findings from their 2018 Survey of U.S. Health Care Consumers, which will be published in August, on the heels of their recently released Deloitte 2018 Survey of U.S. Physicians. Deloitte shares that “consumers and physicians typically agree that virtual health care holds great promise for transforming care delivery. Yet many physicians remain reluctant to embrace the technologies, worried about reimbursement, privacy and other issues.”....Click to continue

Influencing consumer behavior to reduce healthcare costs via cost sharing and engagement strategies, and purchaser cost containment strategies of all stripes have seemingly dominated discussions of regarding the cost of healthcare. So how to physicians feel about their role in the cost equation today?....Click to continue

We still don’t know much at all about what the heck the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan healthcare triumvirate will be doing. But we do now know who will be running it. The renowned Dr. Atul Gawande has been appointed its Chief Executive Officer.............Click to continue

Over two-thirds of hospital readmissions are directly due to medication nonadherence. Many factors contribute to patients not taking their medications, including fear ofside effects, out-of-pocket costs, and.............Click to continue

eHealth this week released a new eleven page report: Costs and Consequences in the ACA Market: A Survey of Individual and Family Health Insurance Consumers, presenting findings from more than 1,700 consumers who.............Click to continue

The May issue of Circulation includes the research article: Impact of Healthy Lifestyle Factors on Life Expectancies in the US Population, which presented findings from a study that aimed “to estimate the impact of lifestyle factors on premature mortality and life expectancy in the US population.”.............Click to continue